The official website and your best resource for MTG duel Commander games. Rules, French banlists, news, blog posts and announcements from the committee.

For the first time since more than a year, there is no change in the banlist this time. The rules committee is watching closely tournament results and the metagame evolution since the ban of Edric last September. The Duel Commander French Cup has been a good occasion to get complete and competitive decklists, and to gather precise statistics on the metagame. We are well aware that white and blue are currently over-represented in top 8s compared to the three other colors. Today, it is still too early to get a good overview of the long-term evolution: certain decks have started to adapt to the fact that the format’s new slower speed but there remains some room for adjustments. We will keep gathering data from all tournaments in the next three months.

The format is currently oriented towards white and blue (Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, Geist of Saint Traft and Zur the Enchanter being the most common decks in top 8), but decks with other colors are far from being wiped out and we had numerous good feedback from players who currently find the format more diverse and open than it had been before Edric’s ban.

We keep working on the metagame evolution, but for this time the banlist remains unchanged.

II – Resources for Duel Commander

After several months of work on two documents, we are proud to present you some resources on Duel Commander.

The first document is for players. It is a complete guide that includes all the rules for playing Duel Commander. If you have doubts or a question regarding Duel Commander rules, you will find the answer there. This “Bible” for Duel Commander has been written with the goal if being the ultimate reference for Duel Commander rules. Don’t hesitate to download and to share it, it is available for free. We also recommend tournament organizers to have it printed at their tournaments in addition to the Comprehensive Rules from the DCI.

The second document is specific to tournament organizers. It gathers recommendations about how to organize, hold and communicate on Duel Commander tournaments.

The rules document mentioned above has been written and validated way before Gatecrash previews, and one rules question is often asked about Gatecrash, that hasn’t been answered in the previous rules document (it shall be updated later). That question is about the Orzhov new keyword ability : Extort. The card’s text box is written like this :

Extort (Whenever you cast a spell, you may pay {W/B}. If you do, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain that much life.)

The reminder text for Extort shows a black and white hybrid mana symbol on the card. Hybrid mana symbols are considered as being of both colors identities.

But this text in italics and between parenthesis is just a reminder text and, like Trinisphere that is playable with a commander whose color identity isn’t black, this reminder text doesn’t affect the card’s color identity.

Example: The card Blind Obedience has a white color identity, not black. This card is legal in a deck with Gaddock Teeg as commander.